As the year has worn on, and more and more big-name PC action games have slipped into 2002, Return to Castle Wolfenstein has emerged as the only triple-A shooter likely to be released in time for the 2001 holiday season. It certainly has a blockbuster pedigree. It's a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D--id Software's first-person shooter that defined the genre--which was itself a follow-up to the beloved Apple II classic Castle Wolfenstein. Return to Castle Wolfenstein's development actually involved two separate teams, both overseen by id Software. The first team, Gray Matter Studios--which, under the name Xatrix, had previously produced Redneck Rampage and Kingpin--was hired to create the single-player campaign, while a new development house, Nerve Software, concentrated its energies on the multiplayer component. All these factors contributed to some perhaps unreasonably heightened expectations. Now that the waiting is over and the game is out, it can be stated for the record that Wolfenstein's single-player mode is good. It's...good. It's pretty good. But with the faint-praise damning out of the way, you'll be happy to hear that the multiplayer game is outstanding.